Moved from Sky to Plusnet and now have ~0 upload speed

Hi,

I am hoping someone might be able to provide some insight to my problem. Googling the symptoms throws up a few items from 5 years ago but little current!

Plusnet took over my phone line last Tuesday and at the same time my Sky broadband suddenly had ~0 upload speed. I let it go as I knew PlusNet broadband was due to arrive the next day. It did and I turned off my Sky Router and plugged in my new plusnet one. After a lot of faffing and being told to go have a cup of tea I finally got the service but again with no upload capability. I switched back and forth between routers to prove it wasn't a hardware issue. After a few days of tests, being told I had to pay for another router to be sent (which still hasn't arrived). After more tests my line had no DSL at all. So today a week later a broadband engineer popped round and could see there was no service. He went to the exchange and effectively did a lift and shift and I got my DSL line back, but again with ~0 upload speed.

Nothing at my end changed bar the phone line move to Plusnet and my sky service broke!
Plugged in a brand new Plusnet router had the exact same issues.
During testing I lost DSL, and on restoration on a new exchange system I am back to square one. I was told that the kit I have been moved to in the exchange is brand new and had been powered up just there and then.

Any bright ideas as to what could be going wrong?

PS: I can connect my devices to a bt broadband neighbour and all devices work fine. I have tried plugging into the test socket and it makes no difference and I can flip between a Netgear and PlusNet router and its the same.

Interestingly the engineer in the exchange did a speedtest.net on his vpn corporate device connected to the wifi there and it also had no upload speed but plenty of download speed. But the comparison may not be a fair one due to their VPN and setup v's public setup. His own non work phone on a difffering wifi signal worked just fine.


The line stats show a connection, I am getting "small" amounts of data uploaded but the majority seems to be "blocked?" If I attach a file to a gmail email, it errors and I can see the my network monitor rise to move a little data.

Devices tried, Windows 7 PC, Apple iPad, Apple iPhone and they all work fine if I hop on next doors BT wifi!

Uptime: 0 days, 1:45:43
DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.5
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 888 / 17,870
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 3.48 / 922.68

Pah - Had to hop onto BT to post this as it wouldn't upload!

Sync speeds look okay, what is configured for the line speeds in the PlusNet portal?

Also have you tried pinging anywhere e.g. ping www.thinkbroadband.com from the command line.

I looked in the plusnet portal and couldn't see anything re speeds. I have everything turned off that I can find like firewall, safteyguards etc.

It is as though my line has some form of hefty blocking on it.

I tried pingtest site when on nexts doors bt wifi I get an an A Line and good stats:
If I then try it on PlusNet I get
Line Quality C*
Ping/Jitter 72/76ms
Unable to test packet loss

So I get it that my DSL line has synced to an upload speed of 888 but something is stopping it being used!

I pulled up a network monitor and I can see outbound traffic for sure, 5K and it even blipped to 20K at one point.

I tried gmail in a web browser and attached a 1K file - that worked, i then tried a 50K file and it failed.

Outlook I can receive an size emails in outlook but can only send tiny ones out, anything more than 50K just fails and fails to send.


Re ping I get a lot of ping failures, here is one with just one
C:\ping www.thinkbroadband.com

Pinging www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 80.249.99.130: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=59
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 80.249.99.130: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 80.249.99.130:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 36ms, Average = 35ms
Minimum = 35ms, Maximum = 37ms, Average = 36ms

Ball is firmly in the PlusNet court then, and its tell them amount high levels of packet loss and you've tested the computers on another connection and they are fine.

Being the first on a new bit of hardware at an exchange is not a good thing and this may be the problem.

Can you do a tracert www.thinkbroadband.com too, just to check that where the packets are being dropped.

Post deleted by angusjam

I assume the "*" is a packet loss, so there is no pattern!

Tracing route to www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 35 ms 33 ms 34 ms lo0.16.Central16.ptn-bng01.plus.net [195.166.130
.221]
3 35 ms 35 ms 35 ms irb.16.ptw-cr02.plus.net [84.93.249.210]
4 36 ms * 65 ms lonap-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net [5.57.80.142]
5 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms te1-1-1-31.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net [80.249.97.85]

6 35 ms 35 ms 34 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]

Trace complete.

C:\tracert www.thinkbroadband.com

Tracing route to www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 * 52 ms 34 ms lo0.16.Central16.ptn-bng01.plus.net [195.166.130
.221]
3 35 ms 43 ms 35 ms irb.16.ptw-cr02.plus.net [84.93.249.210]
4 34 ms 35 ms 35 ms lonap-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net [5.57.80.142]
5 36 ms * 38 ms te1-1-1-31.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net [80.249.97.85]

6 36 ms * 37 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]

Trace complete.

C:\tracert www.thinkbroadband.com

Tracing route to www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 35 ms 36 ms 35 ms lo0.16.Central16.ptn-bng01.plus.net [195.166.130
.221]
3 * 35 ms 34 ms irb.16.ptw-cr02.plus.net [84.93.249.210]
4 36 ms 35 ms 35 ms lonap-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net [5.57.80.142]
5 38 ms 38 ms 35 ms te1-1-1-31.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net [80.249.97.85]

6 35 ms 34 ms 35 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]


PS: Used the .speedtest btwholesale site and it too says 0 for upload speed, same as speednet.

Okay well the good news is that it is either in the broadband line to the exchange or the first links between exchange and core network - the packet loss that is.

So make sure support are aware of this - alas if you have the new PlusNet Hub it cannot be pinged which is a useful tool in cases like this.

I looked in the plusnet portal and couldn't see anything re speeds.

What info re. line speed does this:- https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer... give?

High-speed Broadband

Telephone number:
01xxxxxxxxx
Phone exchange:
yyyyyy STREET
Estimated line speed:
8Mb (This may vary between 7.5Mb and 9.5Mb) - Checked on 2016-04-28 12:41:33
Current line speed:
15 Mb

I have had good speed for the last few years of 14 MB down and 1MB up so I know the exchange can handle it. My dsl service has synced right now at 17 and 888, but regadless I can not get real upload due to issues ever since PlusNet took over my phone line.

The day they took over just the phone line my Sky service lost upload speed
Next day when I got PlusNet broad band their service was identical before DSL dropped completely a couple of days later. (Was that Sky pulling their service then - As I was able to flip my router to either service on day 2&3.)
Had line reinistated a week after getting Plusnet but same issue.

I now need to wait for up to 4 days whilst the move me to a known working service....They say!

Well I called Plusnet today and they have done nothing since I last spoke to them on Wednesday past. They apologized!

As the line has lost sync again (I assume that this must happen just after 2 days as this is what happened the first time) an engineer is booked to come tomorrow.

I am sure they will get my a sync pretty quickly as they seem to be good at that but can you advise who should do what next IF I get my connection back and have close to 0 upload. Calling plusnet last time and telling them I had timeouts and tracert drop outs saw them do nothing. I have in effect lost another week as I don't know how to encourage the correct party to do their job.

thanks

If after repeat engineer visits PlusNet are still doing the same cycle, then its time to say 'you've given them ample time to fix and I want to exit my contract with no penalties and move to another provider'

It turned out to be a faulty card at the exchange which had 17 previous issues.

It took 3 engineer visits to my home and then the exchange to find the fault so not sure if Plusnet should have seen/picked up the card errors or if that is Openreach's domain and why they didn't spot the card issues!

I now have a faster service than before so at last I am happy.

Not impressed with the move and three weeks to fix a fault that occurred the minute they took over my line.

They probably did all they could. It's Openreach that transferred your line to the known faulty card, on BT Wholesale's instructions. BT Wholesale own the card and allocate the ports I believe. Amazing that they didn't know it was duff.

I don't think I've ever seen it reported here that an ISP has detected a faulty card at the exchange through their tests. It needs detailed tests, not the type that ISPs have access to.

Great that it is finally fixed though .

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 26-May-16 20:39:17)

As a matter of interest, what tests can an ISP do on your line? My impression is not much. Can they see all your router stats & error counts?

They can make all the basic line tests checking for earth, battery, loop and dis faults.

On the broadband side of things they can indeed check sync rate, attenuation, SNR error counts etc. It would be fairly pointless if they couldn't.

Funny that EE CS never realise faults that are blatantly obvious from router stats then. Then they have to be told by user themselves what the issue is before they will fix it.

Except that it isn't funny really is it. These goons should know better.

Knowing XRaySpeX, I think it might be irony in his post and the two of you are in agreement .

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 11-Jun-16 17:36:16)